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Life, SSA, God, forever

Monthly Archives: November 2006

In my search for a new place to stay closer to my work I checked out a couple of share accommodation houses. The first was with a 60 year old woman. It was a nice room, really close to the town centre, but it cost $150 a week. Also I have already lived with an oldish woman before when I used to stay near uni and it was good at that time in my life, but I don’t think it would be very helpful now. The other house was $60 a week all expenses. Bargain! Except it’s in the poor area of town, nicknamed ‘the bronx’ and I’m not sure how easily I would be able to sleep with a baker, a baby and 18 year olds partying on the weekend.

I also got offered a couple of other places. $90 bucks a week in a house about 15 minutes away with a married couple and their two month old. And with a single mother and her two pre-teen kids for about $80 a week in a house really close to the centre of town. Both of these had certain appeals, and I’ll keep them in mind for future reference.

Nothing I was offered exactly grabbed me by the head and dragged me joyfully towards it but I thought how is it possible to go terribly wrong with $60 a week? Even if I can’t sleep very much…But I should be able to move quickly if it turns out real bad, which I’m hoping it doesn’t.

I’m really looking forward to not having to drive 50 minutes a day. It really takes it out of me.Plus there are lots of roadworks happening that probably add about 5 minutes to the journey. I have never had great success with housemate relationships. We got on fine, but that was about it. Maybe this time it will be different.

I’m a quiet person. I don’t talk heaps and can’t think of lots of things to say. I’m an introvert so I don’t mind spending time by myself, and large groups of people I don’t know make me really uncomfortable. This is probably the part of myself that I most dislike, that I am awkward in conversation and uncomfortable in large groups and just quiet. Positively I’m not as quiet as I used to be, partly because starting uni forced me to push myself out of my comfort zone and I’m pretty good with one on one conversations.

I hate that feeling of being in a large group and standing by myself and wishing I knew someone well enough to spend the night hanging around or that someone would come up and save me from my standing alone. I guess I feel people are judging me cause I have sub-standard social skills or, worse, they are pitying me for the same reason. (As a former psych student I know they probably aren’t even thinking about me but that doesn’t make the moment any easier). This standing alone in large groups doesn’t really happen very often I try not to get into too many of these situations and because I don’t go too well in these situations I don’t get to go to heaps more.

Part of the problem it takes me longer to build relationships, so I have to put myself into these types of situations for longer. And then I can get more comfortable with people and be more open and make friends. Uni was pretty much a social disaster for me, I made some friends. But it took a long time especially when I didn’t see people that much. Like in high school you spend so much time with the same people you can get to know them and they can get to know you and for an introvert like me all that time is important. But despite this I’ve got some good friends that I am really thankful for.

Because of these things I always dreads new places and new people because I know I’m going to have to start from the beginning again. And there are new people to wonder why I don’t say so much or don’t say much that makes sense. Anyway it’s an extrovert’s world out there, but I’m doing the best I can, most of the time.

We have the state election coming up on Saturday here in Victoria and I found it really hard to choose between the two big parties. (Labor is similar to the Democrats and Liberal is like the Republicans). Basically they both suck.

Labor, which is in government, is pro-abortion and pro-weird greenie stuff like sending billions of litres of drinking water down a river for environmental flows in the middle of a drought. I mean in a drought there wouldn’t be any water in the river anyway. They are also into putting numerous wind farms in lots of places around the state, which is also quite crazy considering wind energy is expensive and inefficient, and 20% of the world’s brown coal reserves are in this state. They are also into weird financial deals were the government (using our taxes) basically pays a private company $500million to build something that only cost $200million. The other notable bad thing they did was introduced a religious vilification law, which was so stupid that a couple of Christian pastors got in trouble for reading the Koran and then laughing about it.

The Liberal leader is pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia, but his party is neither of those two things. They are a bit less influenced by the green movement so they’re promising to build a new dam and hopefully wouldn’t be flushing good water down rivers. (They are also promising a desalination plant, which would probably be a waste of money unless they built more coal power stations). They also have some good public transport plans and it would be good to have a change of government because the other team has been in for 7 years and that is enough.

I used to be pretty left-wing, but now I’m almost a conservative. A few years ago I would never have imagined myself preferencing Liberal over Labor but there’s only so much craziness I can take.

So where am I at with SSA right now? Well I guess I would describe it as knowing the right things to do and knowing the wrong things not to do but not being particularly diligent in the doing and the not doing. So that is really a convoluted way of saying, I’m disobeying in the small things, (as compared to big things not small as in unimportant) such as masturbation, eye wandering, and making a bigger effort to expand social boundaries.

This bad period probably began about 8 weeks or so ago when I started feeling distant from God and then I just started doing these things again. And still feeling distant I haven’t really motivated myself to stop. This kind of talk it crazy coming from me in a way, I’m often pretty cautious of giving too much weight to feelings when they contradict truth.

I was reading this article by a dead guy yesterday. He basically said one of the mistakes young men make is they (I) think they can serve our lusts and pleasures in the beginning and then serve God with ease later.

Anyway I know this can’t go on. I’ve already wasted 8 weeks, in which I could have experienced victory and built stronger foundations through a tough time. I had my SSA group the other night and it was kinda like a kick in the butt. When we were getting prayed for someone got a word and basically said where I’m at right now and I’d only met him that night so he couldn’t have known. That’s like the first time I have ever had that happen. So here’s to fighting and staying the course and persisting and all those hard things in the isolated hour.

I’ve been disturbed recently by what seems to be a slipping away from what the Bible seems to clearly say about stuff. Take for example universalism type thinking, which is the idea that everyone will be ultimately saved. (Moderate versions of the idea say ‘good’ people will be saved totals versions say everyone will be saved). It seems to have grown in popularity in the past year or something, especially among thinking young people, because more people seem to be agreeing with it. There are verses in the Bible that can be used to support universalism, but when all the verses dealing with salvation, hell, heaven and different senses of saved are mixed in together I don’t think the verses that seem to support universalism actually are.

Last weekend I went to a 2500 strong church in Melbourne city of which a large majority (probably 80%) are under 25. The sermon went for maybe half an hour and to be honest I don’t really remember what it was about. The highlight (or lowlight?) was when she said something along the lines of “we should not say ‘God if it’s your will heal me’ why wouldn’t it be His will?” I think the message was basically 30 minutes of meandering thoughts on this issue with maybe one a few verses near the start.

I do worry about these young people where they, where I am, going to be in 10 years or something with all the soft teaching that seems to be around these days. Maybe the fall away from what the Bible says is partly because we are reaping the consequences of years of softish teaching and sometimes ignoring tough issues like universalism, homosexuality, women’s ordination.

The other night at prayer meeting I looked across at the fruit bowl on dining table and was immediately drawn to the long yellow fruit on it. The significance of a couple of bananas probably isn’t obvious. However in Australia eating a banana or having a banana in your fruit bowl has almost become a status symbol.

You see earlier this year Cyclone Larry tore it’s way through north-east Queensland where 90% or something of Australia’s bananas are (or were) grown. This led to massive price increases for the bananas that were still available from New South Wales. Before the cyclone bananas were about $2.50-$3 a kilogram they shot up to about $14 a kilogram, which is about $3 a banana. Bananas were the best or second best selling product in Australian supermarkets before cyclone, with the average Australian eating about 13kg of bananas a year.

Since March I have had a grand total of ½ a banana compared to the one a day I used to eat. Though the plantations are meant to be recovering now and hopefully prices will fall. Then I can enjoy one of my faviourite fruits again.

Telling my parents I deal with same-sex-attraction about 14 months ago was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I had no idea how they would react and all the years of shame and hiding was finally going to be revealed. I shouldn’t have worried so much, they were upset and shocked, but on the whole okay. It made me wish I told them way back when I was 12.

The best thing about them knowing is that I don’t feel like I’m hiding or that there is some big secret they might discover one day, and Mum doesn’t mention marriage and grandchildren as she used to do with annoying regularity. Occasionally they awkwardly ask me how I’m going. Actually only Mum does and Dad doesn’t mention it unless Mum is already talking about it. The conversations go a little bit like this: Mum: so how’s that thing you go to that place for going? Chris: Arrrh yes that thing I go to that place for well…

Telling some friends was also hard. And again it has been helpful to feel like I’m not hiding stuff and to remove any expectation that I should get a girlfriend next week. When I move and I meet new people there may be even more people who I get to know so well that I need to tell them. I’m not sure if a ‘desire’ to tell always becomes a ‘need’ to tell and I’ve seen people who have possibly erred on the side of over disclosure perhaps creating for themselves a cement label.

Anyway being a 21-year-old Christian I’m all for authenticity and realness and broken people walking down narrow yellow brick roads holding hands. But I’m a lot happier if it is someone else’s realness on display. If I’m listening to another tell me about all the dirt beneath the surface. I’m not quite sure why I dislike disclosure so much; maybe it is pride or selfishness or maybe I’m just scared of rejection or worse fearful that I can’t play the victim this time. Whatever, it’s definitely something to for me to work on.